Cooperative Nurse, Client Featured in WHYY Story on Family Connects NJ Program

New Jersey is on track to become the first state to provide free universal postpartum home visits to all families

Family Connects NJ offers at least one free home health visit to all families with newborns. Services will be offered in all 21 counties by January 2027.

• By Nicole Leonard

• May 18, 2026

Kara McPeak holds her nearly 4-week-old son, Clark, at home in Linwood, New Jersey. McPeak recently participated in Family Connects NJ, a universal postpartum home visitation state program that is active in all South Jersey counties, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

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Kara McPeak carefully placed her newborn son, Clark, on a changing table to clean him up and put on a fresh diaper.

“Make sure I got your back,” McPeak said to herself as she grabbed a wipe and Clark protested with cries. “I know, I’m sorry, it’s cold.”

It’s been four weeks since she gave birth to Clark. He’s the first child for McPeak and her husband, who live in Linwood, New Jersey. The new mom is adjusting to all the ups and downs of life at home with a newborn.

“You caught us at a good time,” she said. “He got up at 7 [a.m], he had breakfast, he ate well. He was down for a nap, I was able to shower — you know, some days you don’t shower ’til like 2 [p.m.], if you shower at all — so I was like, ‘OK, I’m out of the shower, we can do this.’”

After she brought Clark home, McPeak said she struggled to figure out a balance of breastfeeding and pumping. Meanwhile, she became worried about her son’s food intake. Then, she had a home visit from a nurse through a state program.

“And we were able to weigh him and make sure he was continuing to gain weight, and that gave me a lot of peace of mind,” she said.

New Jersey is on track to become the first state to offer free postpartum home health visits to every family with a newborn, regardless of income level, insurance type or citizenship status.

The postpartum period following birth can be a big adjustment for families and new parents. It’s also a critical window of time to catch any medical complications in babies and mothers, mental health concerns and other issues.

Supporters hope the Family Connects NJ program will help improve maternal and infant outcomes across the board by acting as a bridge to long-term care and support. Research shows that this approach is already having some early success.

The program became active in all South Jersey counties this past January. Services will be available in all of the state’s 21 counties by January 2027 when the rollout is complete.

More than 10,000 families have completed home health visits since the program launched in five counties in 2024, according to state officials.

“We got a system, it’s well oiled, it’s working, we have a plan in place,” said Brandie Benson, program director. “It’s exciting to see the numbers growing.”

Grab n’ Flow provides free, anonymous access to menstrual and postpartum products at three locations in South and West Philadelphia.

Traveling with the ‘Mary Poppins bag’ to catch early signs of complications

New Jersey has had some of the worst maternal mortality and morbidity rates when compared to neighboring states. Reports have shown significant racial disparities and high numbers of cesarean surgical deliveries.

Pregnancy-associated maternal deaths are still considered rare. There were 258 fatal cases among more than 500,000 live births from 2019 through 2023, state data shows. But most of those deaths, 86.7%, were preventable, according to the state’s maternal mortality review committee. Other serious, nonfatal complications could also be avoided, experts say.

Family Connects NJ, modeled after a foundational program that originated at Duke University in North Carolina, is among several initiatives that the state has launched in recent years to address the public health issue.

The New Jersey Department of Children and Families oversees and funds the local postpartum home visitation program. It contracts with regional community organizations, which provide the boots on the ground.

Participation is voluntary and open to any family with a newborn, either through birth, adoption or fostering. Home visiting services are also offered to parents and families who’ve had stillborn births or are grieving another kind of infant loss.

Nurses visit parents and babies within the first two weeks after delivery, or whenever the newborn comes home. That’s usually before most women have their first postpartum follow-up appointment with their obstetrician or primary care doctor.

“Our goal is to get in there early to check both mom and baby for maybe something that that mom was going to wait until that next appointment for,” said Cassie Scanlon, a registered nurse and nursing supervisor at The Cooperative.

Cassie Scanlon, registered nurse and nursing supervisor at The Cooperative in Atlantic County, provides free home health visits to families with newborn babies within the first two weeks of the postpartum period through Family Connects NJ. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

The community consortium contracts with the state to do postpartum home visits in all South Jersey counties, including Atlantic County.

Each visit can last up to two hours or more, Scanlon said. She’s always prepared with her “Mary Poppins” backpack of supplies, which contains a blood pressure cuff, a stethoscope, thermometers, a pulse oximeter to check mom’s oxygen level and heart rate, gloves, and hand sanitizer.

“And then, of course, the portable scale,” she said, taking out what looked like two flat, rectangular white plastic boards. They snapped together to create one longer board and were attached to a digital scale. “And we weigh baby naked on here so we get a nice accurate reading.”

How much food babies are getting is a top concern among mothers Scanlon sees on her visits. It can lead to a lot of anxiety and stress, she said. Nurses can use the scale to show parents a difference in weight before and immediately after a feeding.

The home visits also prioritize maternal health. Nurses give all mothers and birthing parents a “head-to-toe” assessment and take their blood pressure, record vitals like heart rate, examine incision sites and go over healing progress after vaginal deliveries.

Health providers identified a “serious postpartum health concern” that could not wait for a future doctor’s appointment in 18% of home visits in 2025, state officials said.

In these situations, Scanlon said nurses will arrange an immediate appointment with a patient’s obstetrician or regular doctor. In rare, but serious cases, they may need to go to the hospital for emergency care.

The Cooperative is a community organization that sends nurses to people’s homes in South Jersey to conduct free postpartum wellness visits through Family Connects NJ, a new statewide universal postpartum home visitation program. (Nicole Leonard/WHYY)

Visiting nurses also offer postpartum mental health screenings.

“If they potentially scored high on that, we would wait with them, we would call their obstetrician, we would potentially call 911 in a scenario,” Scanlon said. “And it has been done where we were really concerned about the mom’s well-being and she was potentially suicidal.”

In most cases, though, Scanlon said nurses become someone that new parents can confide in and share their fears, struggles and concerns, while in the comfort of their own home.

“It’s great to just be able to talk through your labor experience and your current experience with a newborn with somebody who’s knowledgeable and truly here to help you through the process,” McPeak said of her visit with Scanlon.

“Every moment is special, and even the hard ones teach you something,” said one New Jersey mother.

Assessing families for additional social services and support

The universal postpartum home visitation program goes beyond medical care and mental health assessments, Benson said.

Nurses and health care workers are also assessing home environments to see if families need working smoke alarms, safe sleeping structures for babies, food, transportation, diapers, formula and other necessities.

Many families might welcome that level of support, but Benson recognizes that others might be wary of letting strangers have access to their homes, especially if they fear that someone will report them to state child welfare agencies based on something they see.

The only time nurses should be calling the state hotline is for suspected abuse or neglect, she said, which is required of all mandated reporters.

“We always say that we are not here to surveil your home. We don’t care if your house is messy or your sink is loaded with dishes. We’re really here to serve you,” Benson said. “We don’t call a hotline because someone is impoverished or they’re struggling. We address that resource in the visit.”

Still, families can elect to meet with nurses at other nearby locations for a postpartum visit if their home is not an option, Benson said.

Bringing postpartum services to all N.J. counties

When the state launched the program in the first five countries, officials relied primarily on social media to get the word out about participation and enrollment. They quickly realized that approach was going to fall short in reaching people who could benefit from the services.

State agencies and participating community health organizations then partnered with hospitals, primary care offices, obstetricians and gynecologists, prenatal childbirth programs, and others to increase awareness about the program.

Now, most counties have outreach specialists that go into the hospitals and meet with families before they even leave the recovery unit. It’s been the most successful way in setting people up for a free home visit, Benson said.

The state is working with Johns Hopkins University in Maryland to collect data and assess program outcomes. It’s important to make sure that the program offers services in an equitable way across all income levels, race and ethnicities, insurance types, cultures, languages, and other factors, Benson said.

As Family Connects NJ expands to full statewide implementation next January, Gov. Mikie Sherrill has proposed $49 million in funding in the next state budget to support the postpartum home visitation program.

This kind of investment in maternal and infant health was long overdue, Benson said. To see the shift in support has been especially meaningful given that she’s been a registered nurse for over 20 years and worked in hospital labor and delivery.

It makes her hopeful that future generations of mothers won’t have to experience the same dangerous, and even fatal, outcomes of the past.

“You learn a lot about your society by how they treat its women,” Benson said. “I have a daughter and I don’t want to live in fear that when she goes to have children one day that I have to take a leave of absence from work and sit at her bedside and monitor and make sure that she’s not handled a certain way. And so I’m thankful that there is this focus on this and there’s this investment and this prioritization of women and women’s health and newborns and babies, because some of this stuff just shouldn’t happen.”

If you or someone you know is struggling and they’re pregnant or have recently given birth, call or text the 24/7 National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 833-852-6262 or the 24/7 National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988.